I have to say I’m all for public flogging.

– Neo-conservative golden girl Ann Coulter on MSNBC, today in 1997

1844: A year & a day after last prediction bombed, Rev. Wm. Miller says world will end today.

1990: Cap’n Joseph Hazelwood, whose tanker Exxon Valdez dumped 11m. gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound, is found guilty of negligence. Penalty for ruining pristine coastline & killing wildlife: 1,000 hrs. community service & measly $50K ‘token restitution.’

2001: Russian space station Mir falls into ocean somewhere ‘twixt Chile & New Zealand.

1975: Group of young Aussies sees strange lights in trees near Nebo, Queensland, & hear explosion.

Happy New Year to Afghanistan & Iran. (Well, have as happy a new year as possible, under the circumstances.) Ominously, in Iran, it’s also End of the World Day.

62 C.E.: After unsuccessful revolt against Romans who beat her & raped her two daughters in public, Brit Queen Boadicea kills herself before Romans can take her alive.

1843: Millerite Movement founder William Miller predicts that Jesus will return to Earth today. Jesus changes travel plans.

1931: William Shatner is born.

1968: After three years of getting spanked by hubby & watching him experiment with LSD, Dyan Cannon splits from Cary Grant.

1968: Leather lovers everywhere mourn as Diana Rigg ends her run as Mrs. Peel on ‘The Avengers.’

1969: John Lennon marries Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

1995: Members of Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo cult, told by blind leader Shoko Asahara that the end of the world is imminent, release poison gas in a Tokyo subway, killing 12 and sending another 5,500 to the hospital.

1996: Patricide poster boys Lyle and Erik Menendez are convicted of first-degree murder for shotgunning their obscenely wealthy parents to death while the couple watched TV & ate ice cream in the family’s Beverly Hills home in 1989.

2001: Buddhist monks are called in to exorcise a ghost from the offices of Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.

I’m not going to tell falsehoods to the American people — I’ll leave that to others.
– President Ronald Reagan, today in 1986

1978: A colorful fireball some ten feet in diameter bursts through the wall of a pub in Huskisson, New South Wales.

1998: In Narbonne, France, a pack of chimpanzees at a wild-animal park are awakened by the noise of a nearby construction crew; irritated, the chimps attack the inconsiderate workers, injuring one so badly that he’ll need 30 stitches in his face.

2001: Firefighters battling a blaze in a New Haven, Connecticut, home manage to rescue the family pets — some 550 birds, mice, frogs, lizards, and other reptiles.